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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 December 2022
This is my second Nokia smartphone- I originally had a C01 Plus, which was physically smaller & lighter (5.5" screen), but I soon decided I'd really like a slightly bigger (6.5") screen, longer battery life, and more storage capacity. Another problem with my old phone was that it wasn't compatible with my HSBC banking app.
This is still a very slimline & compact phone, measuring just 76mm x 164mm x 8.5mm and weighing in at 190g. It's a 4G phone which is absolutely fine for me. It's not locked to any particular carrier, and can take 2 SIM cards (nano size), and a micro-SD card of up to 512GB. It runs Android 11 at the moment. Charging & data transfer are via a C-type USB plug in agreement with the new EU standard. To transfer files to & from your PC, you need to go into the "Connected Devices" setting, & select "File Transfer" from the USB option. Alternatively, just remove the Micro-SD card, place it in an adaptor, & plug it directly into your PC. It's compatible with a fast 18W charger, which shaves some time off the recharge time. The 5050 mAh battery is not removable (unlike my old C01 Plus).
The front camera is 8MP, while the back one is 50MP. Like all smartphones, it looks a bit like the Monolith in 2001, although the back is a nice dark blue colour (Nordic Blue). It does have some advanced features like a fingerprint reader, although I prefer to log into my phone using my PIN. Unlike my previous phone, this one IS compatible with my HSBC mobile banking app, and the Tesco banking app. It also has a built-in FM radio with RDS, which I find to be a very useful feature! I'm surprised many boom-boxes don't have RDS, since it fits fine into my phone & MP3 player! There's space for about 25 icons on the first screen, which is fine, and you can have your less-used icons on the 2nd screen. I'm really happy with it, although I'm not really a smartphone guru- but for me, it's more than adequate. I'd recommend this phone for anyone looking for a well-priced unit, of fairly high spec.
Recent problem: I've noticed recently that sometimes my new phone can get quite slow, or even freeze in the middle of using it. Sometimes it gets so slow that the only option seems to be to restart it. I'm not sure what the problem is- perhaps too many processor-hungry apps running in the background? Another problem I had was that it wouldn't play some of my MPEG2 videos. I solved this by downloading VLC media player from the Play Store.
Lastly, the phone doesn't come with a detailed instruction manual, but you can download a PDF instruction manual from nokia.com. Just search for nokia g21 instructions.
Update: My phone has recently upgraded itself to Android 13, which doesn't seem to me to have a lot of differences from 11 or 12, although the display may be a little more user-friendly now...
This is still a very slimline & compact phone, measuring just 76mm x 164mm x 8.5mm and weighing in at 190g. It's a 4G phone which is absolutely fine for me. It's not locked to any particular carrier, and can take 2 SIM cards (nano size), and a micro-SD card of up to 512GB. It runs Android 11 at the moment. Charging & data transfer are via a C-type USB plug in agreement with the new EU standard. To transfer files to & from your PC, you need to go into the "Connected Devices" setting, & select "File Transfer" from the USB option. Alternatively, just remove the Micro-SD card, place it in an adaptor, & plug it directly into your PC. It's compatible with a fast 18W charger, which shaves some time off the recharge time. The 5050 mAh battery is not removable (unlike my old C01 Plus).
The front camera is 8MP, while the back one is 50MP. Like all smartphones, it looks a bit like the Monolith in 2001, although the back is a nice dark blue colour (Nordic Blue). It does have some advanced features like a fingerprint reader, although I prefer to log into my phone using my PIN. Unlike my previous phone, this one IS compatible with my HSBC mobile banking app, and the Tesco banking app. It also has a built-in FM radio with RDS, which I find to be a very useful feature! I'm surprised many boom-boxes don't have RDS, since it fits fine into my phone & MP3 player! There's space for about 25 icons on the first screen, which is fine, and you can have your less-used icons on the 2nd screen. I'm really happy with it, although I'm not really a smartphone guru- but for me, it's more than adequate. I'd recommend this phone for anyone looking for a well-priced unit, of fairly high spec.
Recent problem: I've noticed recently that sometimes my new phone can get quite slow, or even freeze in the middle of using it. Sometimes it gets so slow that the only option seems to be to restart it. I'm not sure what the problem is- perhaps too many processor-hungry apps running in the background? Another problem I had was that it wouldn't play some of my MPEG2 videos. I solved this by downloading VLC media player from the Play Store.
Lastly, the phone doesn't come with a detailed instruction manual, but you can download a PDF instruction manual from nokia.com. Just search for nokia g21 instructions.
Update: My phone has recently upgraded itself to Android 13, which doesn't seem to me to have a lot of differences from 11 or 12, although the display may be a little more user-friendly now...
